


Conflicting Emotions

by Mosspool13



Series: WidoFjord Week 2019 [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Insecurity, Intimacy, M/M, Pining, Widofjord Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 05:38:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19244911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosspool13/pseuds/Mosspool13
Summary: They don't talk about it.It was only the once, and never again.It's an unspoken thing, unacknowledged between them, the repercussions of which are instigated through an accidental brush of hands, or a too-long held glance.





	1. Fjord - Intimacy

**Author's Note:**

> For WidoFjord (Fjordgast) Week: Day Two: Intimacy, Insecurity
> 
> Inspired by Liam's comment "That's when we start fucking" after the Fjord and Caleb conversation in Episode 62.

"Fjord, you have a little something..." Jester said, fingers twitching as she reached up to the underside of his chin and pressed her thumb to a small, discoloration of skin there. Fjord moved away.

"Ah, yeah, got bit by a bug, I guess." He says, chuckling, rubbing the back of his neck.

Beau, lounging in the seat next to Jester, arm over the back of Jester's chair, smirks at him. "Looks a bit more like a love bite to me."

Jester perks up and squirms in her seat. "Fjjorrrdd?! You didn't tell me you'd found--" she waggles her eyebrows, "a _loverrr_."

Fjord swats at Jester's encroaching hand, glowering at Beau. "It's not a love bite. Just a scratch or somethin'."

Beau's smirk didn't fade, and the pride and joy on Jester's face didn't dwindle and Fjord sighed, defeated. "You two are force to be reckoned with."

"Damn straight." Beau huffed, pleased, sitting straighter. She pointed at him. "Now spill."

"Seriously, it's nothin' interestin'. Just probably knocked into somethin'. I swear."

Jester pouts. "That's no fun." Beau gives him a misbelieving eyebrow raise.

Fjord smiles at Jester, ignoring Beau, swiping his thumb across his nose, "yeah, well, not everything's about love and romance, Jester."

Fjord had told them the truth, it wasn't anything, probably nicked himself with his claw while asleep--he's known himself to do more, worse, while having a nightmare. But now, his mind has been ensnared by Beau's words, and Jester's prodding, and Fjord finds himself wondering about it... about a time that he could have gotten a love bite.

Fjord has been intimate with far few people: Sabien (a few messy handjobs, biting kisses, never on the lips; once Sabien fucked him over the railing, out in the open. He'd been an asshole about it, taunting.) Avantika (he'd had bruises for days afterwards, the way she'd grappled at his wrists, held him down. Her marks were less love bites and more painful brands, teeth marks, ownership and superiority and dominance.)

There had been one more, and Fjord could think about it now, the taste of smoke and the arcane on his tongue.  

***

They don't talk about it. 

It was only the once, and never again.

It's an unspoken thing, unacknowledged between them, the repercussions of which are instigated through an accidental brush of hands, or a too-long held glance.

It all started on that night, when a hand clasp between them became something else, when Fjord had pinned Caleb to the blankets, their breaths mingling, bodies tangled and hearts pounding in tandem. Caleb shuddering against his collarbone, mouthing words into his skin, sometimes in Common, most times in Zemnian. The occasional gasp of his name was what drove Fjord on, had him kissing hard the slope of Caleb's neck, caressing his sides and skinny waist, trailing fingers through Caleb's curls.

Caleb had clutched his hand, fingers tangling with his, gentled Fjord's harsh kiss with a soft, plaintive sound and a soothing murmur. Fjord had been confused by the tenderness, taken aback by the way Caleb had touched his cheek, cupped his cheekbone. 

"Slow, Fjord." He'd said, into the darkness, the only light a faint halo of dancing lights that circled above them. "We have the whole night."

Fjord had hesitated, unsure what Caleb meant, and Caleb seemed to notice, because he asked Fjord to switch places with him. They swapped, Fjord on the bed, Caleb hovering above, and Caleb showed him.

Showed him something tender, slow, all-encompassing that left Fjord shivering against the mattress, knuckled white from clutching the sheets, biting his lip to keep his sounds from getting too loud.

It was like nothing he had ever experienced before. 

It'd been a far cry from the rough, high-tension couplings he'd had with Sabien, or the power dynamic that was his relationship with Avantika.

_Fjord thinks of a conversation a long time ago, a tavern, a dwarf woman with frightening fingers that had trailed across his armor, Jester's strange and pointed comment, Caleb, voice low, "was it... someone special?" Fjord's answer, thinking of rough hands, tumbles across walls, on floors, never on a bed, always just to get off, or when they were too angry with each other, the tension between them sparking into lust rather than thrown punches. "No." Had been Fjord's reply._

Caleb hadn't spent the night. He'd left their shared room, closing the door quietly behind him, but the way he'd turned before the door closed, thanked Fjord for speaking with him, for allowing him his questions, and his eventual answer, had seemed so different from the absolute disregard Sabien held of their trysts, or Avantika's quicksilver, knowing gaze, their ever-present game of chess.   

But still, they don't talk about it.

And Fjord wonders if he is putting too much stalk into their moment... that one tender night like that could change their dynamic, _should_ change their dynamic. That he somehow was affected by it more than Caleb was. 

He's beginning to suspect that he is. 

 


	2. Caleb - Insecurity

Caleb's inappropriate infatuation with his friend was beginning to get dangerous. 

It had been a small thing, easy to ignore, the flash of a grin, the sparkle in golden eyes, a plush mouth and a lean waist and frame. It had only increasingly become a problem after the Squall-Eater, after Avantika, after Fjord had come away from Avantika's room that first night, the glaze of conversation in his eye, the blaze of a flush on his cheeks, the result of the tension that had effused the room while Caleb had watched through Frumpkin's eyes. Caleb hadn't realized he'd wanted Fjord until he had seen the way the two of them had leaned into each other, the sexual tension that had sparked viscerally between them, and the jealousy that had curdled in Caleb's stomach. 

He'd wrestled it deep into himself, ignored it when he'd told Fjord to do what had to be done. Choked it down when Fjord came back, not even a day later, a secret in the set of his jaw, and the knowing glint in Caduceus' eyes. Bitten it back when Fjord came back disheveled, looking like he'd just walked away from sex (which, Caleb found out later, he had), nursing a pint alone at a table in the tavern in Darktow, successful after a round of distraction--distraction indeed.  

Caleb had since been suffering with the knowledge that he found Fjord attractive and that he wanted to climb him like a tree. It did not help that Fjord was cunning, if prone to acting before thinking sometimes, and kind, if oblivious to some of his more cutting sarcasm, and intelligent, even if he didn't like to show it. 

And his friend. Which made him off-limits. Because Caleb already knew he was a fuck-up, but adding sex into the mix would make whatever modicum of friendship they had built between them, the Mighty Nein included, more disastrous--especially should Caleb's misdeeds come to light. Caleb couldn't handle that. Not now, and certainly should anything happen between them.

Not that anything would. 

***

Caleb staggered into his room, closed the door firmly behind him and started to unspool the little silver thread. His hands were shaking. 

" _Scheiße. Verdammt_. Damn it, _damn it._ " He cursed, giving up and throwing the thread back into his pouch. Frumpkin looked up from under the table and mewed pitifully at his master. 

Caleb stooped to scratch Frumpkin behind the ear before he yanked out his chair at the desk table and slumped into it, pressing his hands into his eyes and breathing in and out. 

He was still sweaty and hot from what he'd just done, with Fjord. He'd been too weak to resist, distracted by Fjord's words and down-turned expression. He'd wanted answers, when he'd parked himself in Fjord's room, sitting on the edge of his bed, waiting for his return. He hadn't planned for anything of that nature to happen. He hadn't planned to clutch at Fjord's clothes like a life-line, or to be clutched back in return. To slow their frantic movements into something softer, more romantic. To watch Fjord's expression shift from confusion to something else, something like disbelieving ecstasy. 

To make love to him in that bed. Scarred palm in scarred palm, panting against his exposed chest. 

If he'd been in his right mind, he would not have let any of that happen. 

_But,_ Caleb thinks to himself, _you've never been in your right mind, have you?_

_"--I am... crazy."_

_"I... actually don't think you're crazy. You're one of the more put-together people I know. At least, that's what I see. It's what you show."_

Oh, would he wish that were true. 

He fumbles for his notebook, the one he'd written in a long time ago, when they'd gotten their matching scars. He turns to that page, fingers moving over the words he'd written there. 

What a fool, he was. He'd gone and let his little crush explode into something far, far more terrible. 

He'd ruined it; ruined all of what they have, their friendship, the Mighty Nein. All because of his feelings. 

He would just have to hope that he could suffer through being in love without making anything worse, without wanting more, without _reaching_ for more.  

Because that is what he'd done. He'd reached and he'd taken what he'd wanted and fucked everything up in the process. If not now, then down the road.

Down the road, when Fjord realizes he's bound himself to a man who'd killed his parents. 

Caleb stays slumped over his notebook, fingers itching, for a long time, before he grabs a quill and finally begins to write. 

He writes well into the night.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title says Insecurity, we all quietly mouth Self-Hatred.
> 
> Caleb... love yourself.


End file.
